Permit me to begin this by confessing, as a libertarian writer and
thinker, that economics is not my long suit. F. Paul Wilson observed
many years ago that our movement seems to be divided into two distinct
groups: those he characterizes as "gnomes", whose principal interest
is the politics of money, and those he designates "Flinters" whose
highest priority is the practical issue of self-defense. I call the
latter "hooligan libertarians" and I'm proud to number myself among
them.

By contrast, many "gnomes" appear to find anything involving the
theory and mechanics of self-defense somehow faintly unsavory or even
embarrassing. A recent article posted by Lew Rockwell on his website,
detailing what a libertarian administration should do in its first
month, mentioned dealing with Second Amendment matters on the 28th
day. (You might compare this with Hope, a novel that JPFO's Aaron
Zelman and I wrote a few years ago concerning the first libertarian
president.)

While never denying its importance, over the years I have come to
believe that economics is more peripheral to questions of individual
liberty than many of the gnome-types commonly believe it is. Some of
them have even claimed, from time to time, that if the economy of a
nation-state is free, then every other matter of individual liberty is
automatically taken care of, or soon will be. Try mentioning morality
if you enjoy abuse being heaped on your head. However, when I first
came into the movement, Spain (just to name an example) was a "benign"
dictatorship controlled by Generalissimo Francisco Franco. It was a
popular place for rich Europeans and Americans to live, because, as
long as you were rich, your financial life could remain relatively
free.

If you weren't richsay you were an American sailor on liberty
and you happened to drive through a red lightthe Spanish cops,
known as the Guardia Civil, could and would machinegun you to death,
and there was nothing the naval base commander or even the American
ambassador could do about it. People like the Basques, Galicians, or
Catalans, whose very languages were outlawed, were in even a worse
position.

So much for a free market taking care of everything else.

It might surprise you, however, to discover that money and the
economy are primarily First Amendment concerns. Most people may not
realize it, but money, first and foremost, operates within a society
as a vital medium of communication. As such (and despite the quaint,
old-fashioned socialist Utopian views of Gene Roddenberry and other
Star Trek writers who envisioned a future society without money), it
is absolutely essential to the continued wellbeing of all human
civilizations.

Here's why: the information that money conveys is called "price"a
word, in the study of economics, with a technical definition.
Each of us contributes to the pool of that information whenever he
buys somethingor refrains from buying itin the marketplace, as
long as the marketplace, and the choices we all make, remain free and
uncoerced.

With the purchases and non-purchases we make almost every day, we
communicate to the merchants we patronizeand ultimately to the
manufacturers who supply themhow much we want something, by how
much we're willing to pay for it, or how much of it we're willing to
buy.

In an unfree market, government stifles this kind of communication
with policies like price controls and rationing. Government can also
"jam" communicationsthat is, drown out the information we need
with "noise"by issuing vast amounts of worthless paper money or
credit. In short, economic regulation is censorship, and inflation is
propaganda.

In either case, you can't know the real price of anything (that
is, the amount of money people are willing to give up in order to
obtain whatever commodity or service we're talking about), whether
it's bread, shoes, houses, gasoline, or ammunition. So manufacturers
can't know how much of anything they should make, and merchants can't
know how much to order and put on their shelves. Invariably, they both
end up with warehouses full of unwanted shoes they made or ordered too
many of, and vast shortages of bread that, historically, have killed
millions.

Such deaths usually precede many more that occur once socialist
theorists, beside themselvs with infantile fury because their theories
can't possibly be wrong (so somebody must be deliberately sabotaging
their lovely Utopian system), start putting those they regard as (or
suspect of being) anti-social non-cooperators up against a wall and
shooting them. Lenin, Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot did quite a lot of
this. Of course, as Aaron Zelman would point out, it can only
happenhas only happenedin regimes where nobody but the
government has guns.

Today, many believelike General Franco's admirersthat you
can have a free economy without political freedom and that somehow,
economic freedom will seep into the system and bring about political
freedom. China is the latest trying to get away with this nonsensea
free economy within an unfree nation, and they're being aided by
American corporations so greedy they don't care who gets hurt in the
process.

Yes, China is striving toward a free economy, but say the wrong
thing online in the wrong place at the wrong time and Google or
Yahoohow do those sonsofbitches sleep at night?will rat you
out to the butchers of Lhasa who will cheerfilly throw you into
prison where your organs may be harvested for the benefit of the
geriatric nomenklatura

It's like exactly like helping Nazis murder Jews and Gypsies and
gaysas IBM once didand it does not represent progress toward
liberty

But, as usual, I digress.

Viewed as a medium of communication, it's easy to understand why a
free society requires the private issue of money. Government money
consists of nothing but censorship and lies. That's hardly surprising,
since government itself consists of nothing but brute force and fraud.
Government is only capable of producing poverty, destruction, and
death.

Only real people can create real money.

But only if they're really free.

Four-time Prometheus Award-winner L. Neil Smith has
been called one of the world's foremost authorities on the ethics
of self-defense. He is the author of 25 books, including The
American Zone, Forge of the Elders, Pallas, The Probability Broach,
Hope (with Aaron Zelman), and his collected articles and speeches,
Lever Action, all of which may be purchased through his website
"The Webley Page" at
lneilsmith.org.

Ceres, an exciting sequel to Neil's 1993 Ngu family novel
Pallas was recently completed and is presently looking for a
literary home.

Neil is presently working on Ares, the middle volume of the
epic Ngu Family Cycle, and on Roswell, Texas, with Rex F. "Baloo"
May.

The stunning 185-page full-color graphic-novelized version of The
Probability Broach, which features the art of Scott Bieser and was
published by BigHead Press
www.bigheadpress.com
has recently won a Special Prometheus Award. It may be had through the publisher, at
www.Amazon.com,
or at BillOfRightsPress.com.